The woman, who is divorced but says she would love to be married again, describes herself as being ‘on the wrong side of 45 with a brace of kids’ and bewails her place in ‘relationship no-man’s land’, condemned to be alone for the rest of her days.

Obviously this is familiar territory. Just a few weeks ago I wrote about how the very same Daily Mail was encouraging married middle aged women to dump their Boring loyal dudes. Less than a week ago I showed how the very same Daily Mail had devoted no less than two articles whispering in women’s ears that they might need to divorce if they were Trapped in a not unhappy marriage. I’ve lost track of how many times we’ve discussed the Daily Mailselling divorce. They certainly provide the manosphere with rich fodder. But as we’ve seen before with the Mail, sometimes reality momentarily bleeds through. Today the Mail isn’t selling divorce, and instead turning its gaze on the realities the women who they egged on are experiencing.

Next we learn about Ruthie, an attractive aging baby momma. According to the article she is 47 and has been looking for a long term relationship for 10 years. The author explains the thought process which lead to Ruthie’s current predicament:

‘I always had boyfriends when I was younger and assumed I would again after James was born,’ she says. ‘When he was three, I started chatting online. These chats were fun — and sometimes quite flirty — but if I ever suggested we meet, the men would often back off, saying they were not looking for a relationship.

I’ve been called cruel in the past for bursting the bubble that women’s sexual power never declines, but I think the real cruelty is the misinformation we feed younger women which inhibits their ability to make better choices. It isn’t that all women should marry young or necessarily even marry at all, but those who want to marry are best served to take the search for a husband seriously early on. Those who choose to delay marriage or remain unmarried entirely would be much better served to understand the truth upfront; they won’t be in the SMP power position forever, and dating won’t always be a fun round of judging the performance.

The reversal in the SMP power position causes women’s experiences of dating later in life to mirror men’s dating experience earlier in life. Just as we often hear from men that younger women are flaky and will treat them as a backup plan or cancel at the last minute, older women experience the same things from the men they date. We saw this above with Ruthie, and we see the same occuring with 46 year old Sarah Browne who works in communications for a skincare company:

‘I keep trying to date men over the internet, but it is often hopeless,’ she says. ‘I can’t count the times a guy has seemed really keen to arrange a date, and then, with sometimes only five minutes to go, I get a text saying sorry, he can’t make it. I’ve been told they cry off as they have met someone more suitable.’

The author miss-attributes this to the cruelty of internet dating culture, but it is much better explained by the dynamics of the sexual marketplace (SMP).

This isn’t the only thing the author misreads. The author infers that since there are roughly equal numbers of men and women aged 45 to 64, that there shouldn’t be an imbalance in dating fortunes for men and women of that age bracket. Additionally, the piece suggests that the reason for the imbalance past age 64 is due to soley higher mortality rates for men.

I don’t have the data for the UK, but I’m guessing it roughly parallels the US Census data I pulled for my post on the shifting sexual marketplace. It isn’t just a case of women moving from a position of relative strength to weakness in the SMP, the numbers go from being wildly stacked in their favor to ultimately being stacked against them. Even when the numbers are roughly even in their late 30s and throughout their 40s, this is a huge change from when they were in their 20s:

This is of course magnified by the direction each sex tends to date age wise. Women in their 20s are not only outnumbered by single men their age, but they have the option to date men older than them as well. This same trend works to their disadvantage later in life.

Another bit of misinformation is this blurb from the margins:

Divorce in England and Wales in the 45- plus age group rose by more than 30 percent between 1997 and 2007

I’ve already addressed this here, but if you want to just see the chart it is here. The next blurb in the margins also caught my attention:

Many studies suggest men who become single after years of marriage are quick to find a new mate, while women are more cautious

This is the old women are done with men after a certain age rationalization. The reality is the quality of their choices tends to be much lower after a certain age. We also know from the AARP study that women who divorce late in life are often shockingly alone, especially if they don’t remarry (emphasis in quotes is mine):

Almost 9 in 10 men (87%) dated after their divorce, compared to 8 in 10 women (79%)… Among those who dated after the divorce, more than half of men (54%) but fewer women remarried (39%). (Page 39)

Many women, especially those who have not remarried (69%), do not touch or hug at all sexually. An even larger majority of women who have not remarried do not engage in sexual intercourse (77% saying not at all), in comparison with about half of men (49%) who have not remarried. (Page 6)

Note that while the study was of late life divorce and done by the AARP, 89% of the people surveyed divorced between age 40 and 55. The author of the Plankton blog herself addresses this question:

Show me a (straight) woman of my age who is alone and who says she doesn’t want a man.

Show me a liar.

One thing which made me chuckle about the article was the appeal to authority when establishing that the SMP really does shift from women to men as time progresses. She turns to no less than a researcher from Oxford. But he points her to the same OK Cupid blog post which I shared months ago:

It’s good to know the folks at Oxford are starting to catch up with the manosphere!

40 Responses to The plankton generation

May I (as usual) take a slightly contrarian viewpoint. Women love to complain, and their sob-stories about a lack of male interest (that is when they aren’t complaining about male interest) do not really ring true to me – not that anyone I know would ever take anything the Daily Wail says, as anything but pandering to females.

[D: The AARP study results show the same basic pattern though. It was spun by the press and I would say even the AARP itself as showing empowerment for older divorcées. But when you look at the actual findings it is something else entirely.]

I am going to suggest that women over forty have just as much attention as at any other age, however the reason they fail to see the interest is that the men who are interested are inevitably older than them, and that that is why they fail to see the interest. They want younger men, in much the same way men want younger women. If they can’t get the younger man then they go Eat Pray Love (i.e. they buy a foreign usually Arab man on holiday who should he turn up in the U.K. is then spun as having met somewhere else e.g. Paris – yes I had actually had to endure a forty something woman explaining this to me about her Arab Lover – I wasn’t born yesterday!). If they can’t get that then they have to drop standards and ‘put out’ immediately. Even my own mother – newly widowed at eighty-nine had two guys (younger obviously) queueing up to date her.

The only difficulty women will have, is, as for younger women, if they are FAT or UGLY (and my mother was young looking for her age). I wouldn’t be interested in Plankton, (too old, too wrinkly, mother of a Bastard) but then I am not every other Brit.

SMP? I tried numerous google searches with other keywords such as relationships and dating. No luck. I searched this site for “SMP” and came up with one hit: the present entry. Could you please define this jargon? Thanks.

[D: Fair point. It stands for Sexual Market Place. I spelled it out in the post, but didn’t make the connection between the term and the abbreviation. I just fixed that. The other similar term used in the manosphere is MMP, or Marriage Marketplace.]

“I suspect all of those articles hyping up look how attractive this older woman is have set many women up for failure:”

A funny thing about those articles is they compare the chosen celebrity to other women her age. They Daily Mail knows their readers myopic nature well! “Doesn’t Heather Locklear/Demi/Jennifer Anniston look great for fifty?” Compared to most post menopausal women, these ladies are lovely. But, compared to an average looking 25 year old they seem ancient, decrepit and of course sterile.

As I read the Daily Mail it makes me chuckle because its all over the place on these issues, as you noted…sending women multiple conflicting messages and apparently attempting to keep them in a constant state of insecurity…..I enjoyed reading your article though, and I think what you say makes sense and seems to reflect a balance common in nature…if women have certain advantages during one point of the life cycle, those are balanced out by certain advantages for men at a different point in the life cycle….as natural as spring and autumn, or sun and rain.

@Opus
In fact older women have slightly lower options than 20 something but still they have not problem finding men equal or a bit better than them. The only problem is entitlement of these women. They are satisfied with nothing but the very best.
It reminds me of one radio broadcaster. She claimed, when younger she was satisfied with, lets say, a regular bad boy. Now, as a single mother in her 40s, she requires someone who is charming, rich and still with bad boy qualities. This is just crazy.

Well Dalrock theis article is the social purpose of MGTOW. These stories today you are showing are from chioces these women have made based on lies from the femminist pop culture. MGTOW is going to make these sitiations involuntary. (“involutary childless spinsterhood” that should bring a terror worse than fear of death to any woman.) This will be something that men will do to women in an effort to protect themselves from the laws of misandry women are so fond of. When these stories become more common then women will be ready for marriage reform. Due to the “hamster” this may only take only a few years and not the 40 to 50 it took to get us where we are today.
Keep up the work Dalrock. you are very valueable for teaching the stupid women out there about reality in a kind way.

I still think it is the female Rationalisation Hamster on steroids. The Oxford researcher, claims that women over forty-five cannot find a lover because men holding all the cards always choose a younger lover. That bears absolutely no relation to the world in which I live where (as I indicated above – Pussy being the limiting factor) women always hold all the cards – even if they claim (as always) to be victims.

I would suggest that it is even harder for the older male, because a woman hardly wants – all things being equal – a man old enough to be her father, yet men will do anything for sex. I could name any number of women I have known who, aged fifty, snagged a guy in his twenties, including two lawyers of my acquaintance, and a local mayor – who I did not know – who did just that! As for single guys who have married a divorced woman (of similar age) with three or more children, that is something I have frequently encountered (including no less than two other lawyers of my acquaintance, and an ex-gf of mine who aged fifty hooked up with her twenty year old son’s best friend) yet one might have thought from these articles that a woman in that situation would be virtually untouchable. Clearly not. In my view it is nothing less than abuse for a woman to seduce let alone marry a man of an age young enough to be her son, however women who do it, are not castigated for it – though men will regard the male lover as a wimp, and a pathetic specimen for dating a woman twenty years older. He is metaphorically marrying his grand-mother (even though she is in reality only his mother’s age – as your own Roy Masters of the FHU put it one day on his Radio Programme). Depriving a man of the chance to compete against his peers for women of his own age group (and thus depriving him of the chance of Fatherhood) which is what these women are doing, is in my view – even though the men be of full age – abuse. The idea that older men can just snag a young chick is frankly delusional unless you have the looks and money of Brad Pitt, or if there is some other factor in the relationship, e.g. the bride is third world.

I hope this follow-up post is not disrailing the thread, but I have very strong feelings against the Cougar, as I regard them with an instinctual contempt.

I think she looks very good for her age. I am guessing she’s had work done since her face and neck are so different, but it was well done work. I can easily see a nice 45-55 year old man being interested. Personality does matter. It matters when you are young and hot and it matter even more as we age.

Greyghost:
I’ve often said that the statements and actions of feminised women are better arguments for MGTOW than what these guys are writing for themselves. Women in our culture are a turn-off to any decent male.
Last May, on Mothers’ Day, I was running some errands and stopped in Chinatown for some lunch. Of course, all the restaurants were packed; but I noticed something: anywhere from 1/4 to 1/3 of the families out were American husbands with Chinese wives. Amazing how happy, stable, and well-behaved these families looked.
Contrast that with Fathers’ Day, a month later. The local Amerobitches held a ‘Slutwalk’; pointedly parading around in their sluttiest costumes through a part of town well-known for its infestation with male street-vermin.
If men want to be valued for their worth as husbands and fathers, these two stories speak volumes.

This Ruthie is 47 and has been looking for a boyfriend for 10 years? Come on, that’s not the SMP at work. Most women, once they are ready to, can find one in a couple of weeks.

As for whether she’s attractive, they always say that. Has there ever been a woman in any of these articles (with no photo shown) who is not called attractive? We should really retire that word when talking about them, it’s so overused it’s meaningless.

@My Name is Jim
Yes, I thought that too.
I don’t think it’s necessarily just physical attractiveness though.

@Eric
“1/4 to 1/3 of the families out were American husbands with Chinese wives. Amazing how happy, stable, and well-behaved these families looked.”
Have you read the Tiger Mom stuff🙂

I just read a bit on Plankton’s blog ‘posh, rich, no facial hair’. Frankly ridiculous as dealbreakers at 30 let alone 50.

This is reminding me of that 60 something woman we were talking about a couple of weeks ago.
There’s tons of guys around. And most 50 something guys are not chasing women half their age off with a stick.

I don’t think so either, but plenty of others have done the cut-down-your-list-of-requirements speech better than I can. Paging The Private Man …

Anyway, as I’ve said before, I’m almost in their age range snd yes, married to a woman significantly younger (not just a few years). I’m in the accidental cradle robber camp, she wanted me as a husband before they did so now I’m taken. Though now I like it. If my wife decided to run off with a gigolo I’d prob replace her with another. It has its advantages.

The Oxford researcher, claims that women over forty-five cannot find a lover because men holding all the cards always choose a younger lover. That bears absolutely no relation to the world in which I live where…

Shushhhhh…people will say we’ve had lunch.

(as I indicated above – Pussy being the limiting factor) women always hold all the cards – even if they claim (as always) to be victims.

Frankly, I think the problem is that woman-o-sphere likes to bitch as much as the manosphere does. The SMP is a crappy place for everyone, and everyone feels unfairly put on.
I feel badly for the Plankton blogger because I have seen women in her position and it’s painful. OTOH, I’ve seen plenty of older women remarry. The grandmother of a friend of sons, with whom I sometimes eat lunch, was widowed about a year ago. The widowers are already dogging her–and she’s not so great looking–or ready to date, for that matter.
IMHO, the cards are pretty equally dealt. Both men and women have something the other wants, needs or values. I think we lose sight of that on these blogs.

In my view it is nothing less than abuse for a woman to seduce let alone marry a man of an age young enough to be her son…The idea that older men can just snag a young chick is frankly delusional unless you have the looks and money of Brad Pitt, or if there is some other factor in the relationship, e.g. the bride is third world.

I think you’re right on both counts. When I see a difference of more than ten years, no matter who is the older partner, I start to wonder what’s up.

As I read the Daily Mail it makes me chuckle because its all over the place on these issues, as you noted…sending women multiple conflicting messages and apparently attempting to keep them in a constant state of insecurity…..

All publications aimed at women send them multiple conflicting messages and keep them in a constant state of insecurity. That’s how their advertisers sell women crap they don’t need. The nature of the crap doesn’t actually matter. In the 1950s, it was girdles and cookbooks; now it’s Spanx and briefcases–but the goal is to sell crap, not to push any particular ideology. The ideology changes when the need to sell new and different crap arises.
[D: It’s a good thing they don’t want to sell men anything. Otherwise they would constantly run articles encouraging men to divorce too.]

I just can’t feel sorry for these women. As a young man who, more often than not, goes through the dating market as “invisible”, I feel no pity for those older women. As a younger gal, you could have had your pick of the liter and stuck with him. Instead, you chose to be choosy, and now it’s kicking you in the ass.

I do hope they find some sort of happiness, but I doubt they’ll find it. And the women I’m interacting with on a dating level? I think most on headed down these older women’s paths.

[Correction: More often than not, I go through the dating market as “invisible” unless I’m acting like a total aloof asshole to young women, and want nothing more than meaningless sex. If I act like that, I get all sorts of attention.

I think this is a case of biological age not matching emotional age. This women are the same entitled 20’s something they were, they just spent having 20…a while like Edward says.

If they never past the entitlement of getting “the man I deserve” of course their demands will increase with age and reach ridiculous proportions, of course the men that probably still want them even if old and past their best years are invisible to them. They are still chasing the same Alphas they are used to, but this Alphas keep their Dating Market Value longer than women and young women are as atracted as they were and they are younger and prettier so though luck grandma.
Raise sluts and they will take your man.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you check the emails of this women the amount of men that contacted them but where deemed undateable with just at a glimpse at their profile and then to bitch about men being shallow…same old same old.

“[Women over 40] want younger men, in much the same way men want younger women.”

No. Just, no.

“That bears absolutely no relation to the world in which I live where (as I indicated above – Pussy being the limiting factor) women always hold all the cards – even if they claim (as always) to be victims.”

Your framing is wrong, even if this has been your local observation. In a normal world, aged, dessicated apples don’t sell as well as fresh, juicy ones–even if everybody likes apples. In this context, that the apple cartel is powerful, is insignificant–since the issue at hand is the relative demand of different kinds of apples.

“I would suggest that it is even harder for the older male, because a woman hardly wants – all things being equal – a man old enough to be her father, yet men will do anything for sex.”

Notice you’re balancing “older male” against “a man old enough to be her father”. Older does not necessarily mean octogenerian. Since most women don’t object to a man being merely ‘older’ than themselves, then it doesn’t follow that older men should have a harder time attracting younger women, irrespective of the strength of their innate sexual drive.

“The idea that older men can just snag a young chick is frankly delusional unless you have the looks and money of Brad Pitt, or if there is some other factor in the relationship, e.g. the bride is third world”

Reframe: “The idea that [an older man can attract women younger than themselves, even women significantly younger ,] is frankly delusional unless you have the looks and money of Brad Pitt…”
I hope the silliness of this sentence is clear. It’s assumption that the primary criteria younger women use, in considering older men as potential mates, is fabulous looks and money is, in my view, nonsense. The “other factor[s] in the relationship” are more weighty than you think. Your shaming language with the Third World bride is noted.

I am afraid that nothing you have written above has made any sense to me, either in terms of what you have said – I find it incoherent – or its purport. The ‘shaming language’ insult – I did no such thing – suggests to me that I have in some way got under your skin. Perhaps you can explain why?

[D: It’s a good thing they don’t want to sell men anything. Otherwise they would constantly run articles encouraging men to divorce too.]

Exactly. They’re trying to sell stuff to men as well—our money is just as green, after all. But curiously, they don’t find a way to inject relationship dissatisfaction and divorce at every turn when talking to us.

“The traditional idea was that women would encourage the qualities in men that would make them good husbands (the family man ideal) and would give up some of the sexual power they wielded in their 20s (by committing to one man rather than pursuing casual relationships with many)”

Women’s attractiveness and fertility peak around 21-24 years of age, and getting commitment from men is always more difficult for women than getting sex from them. So if, say, a 23-year-old woman gets married, she isn’t giving up some of her sexual power. In fact, she’s utilizing it to the highest degree (or getting the highest possible return on investment) by snagging the highest-status man she will ever be able to snag in her entire life.

I’m frankly a bit tired of people spreading the notion that young women are giving something up when marrying young. No, they aren’t.

[D: Good point. I don’t think Oz Conservative would actually disagree with you. I think what he means is the women are tempted to try to misspend their power based on the intoxicating feeling they receive. I’ve written about this here and here.]

They know who decides to spend. And they know the mangina husband will agree to this expenses. When they realized that TV stopped being a gender-neutral device to become an estrogen-fest of Oprah, Lifetime movies and feminism.

[they don’t find a way to inject relationship dissatisfaction and divorce at every turn when talking to us.]

They can’t sell us frivolous divorce. Men know that divorce is very expensive for them. If divorce favored men (who could run with alimony and child support), they would sell divorce to men. I already see the ads showing divorced men with girls half their age only for having that car, that clock, that clothes, etc.

D: It’s a good thing they don’t want to sell men anything. Otherwise they would constantly run articles encouraging men to divorce too.

Do most magazines aimed at men have much to do with relationships at all? Much of what my husband reads is either political or hobby oriented. The stuff I see on the net like Ask Men seems to be more concerned with how to talk your gal in anal than into marriage. I take your point, but I don’t see men’s mags fostering marital stability particularly.

Seems one of the tell-tale signs of a potentially disastrous wife is her immersion in contemporary pop culture and trendy “intellectual” fashions. Does she get all her cues from women’s magazines and TV shows? Does she have no interest in high culture and no knowledge of real history? Does she parrot feminist and PC talking points? What about her friends–do they do all the above? If so, run away, run far away, as fast as you can. Don’t even bother dating her, let alone marrying her. You have been warned.

my first thought when reading that daily mail article was ‘duhuh, what were you thinking? that you’d always be young and hot?’
well, surprise: elderly men have pretty good dating prospects (as most planktons will be well aware, having dated lots of elderly guys in their youth) so they aren’t too interested in your sagging boobs or nagging teenage child, not to mention your ‘all men should worship the ground i walk on’ mentality.

i blame radical feminism for a lot of this: encouraging women to sleep around and have kids on their own and basically claiming that wanting to be in a long-term relationship was some sign of weakness, of ‘giving in’ to men: you should do it all on your own, hopping from one man to another without much thought. even marriage was to be treated that way: you get a little bored? just get divorced.
and so in the ’80s a lot of impressionable young women started really believing that and acting according to it. never quit realizing that one day they’d be old and there wouldn’t be a new boyfriend just around the corner any longer. (or at least not a boyfriend they’d want: they are still aiming for the same attractive, socially successful 40-something and 50-something guys they’ve been dating since they were 30 years old)

Wow, the misogyny is off the charts with some of these comments. Yikes, some really hurtful and hateful comments about women. Personally, I don’t think men and women are all that different emotionally or sexually. The idea that men only want sex is a myth and that women are frigid money-grubbers is also dumb. I wish Plankton were not so overly sensitive about being single and could just enjoy her life. But oh well. I pray for a happy and non-desperate middle age. I’d rather be alone than to be made to feel so worthless.